


three's a crowd

by lonely_is_so_lonely_alone



Category: Law & Order
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Male-Female Friendship, post-ep aftershock, post-ep under the influence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:33:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26921443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonely_is_so_lonely_alone/pseuds/lonely_is_so_lonely_alone
Summary: Jack and Jamie talk about the elephant in the room.- post ep for Under the Influence (8x11)
Relationships: Claire Kincaid/Jack McCoy, Jack McCoy & Jamie Ross
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	three's a crowd

**Author's Note:**

> Got to the Jamie Ross era of repeats, then to Under the Influence. I love the relationship between Jamie and Jack, the way it's not quite a friendship - the way they didn't just replace Claire with a mark2. 
> 
> I wish they'd really talked about in the show, though (I say over twenty years after it aired).

He was supposed to meet Jamie for dinner. 

That’s the last thing he said - he even promised. Hands in pockets, at the door to the office. He said, ‘I’ll be there by dessert,’ and he wondered if she could tell from the way he spoke that he wouldn’t be doing much of anything, apart from drinking. 

One glass of scotch, turned to two like magic. He’d always been able to hold his liquor, ever since he was a kid. One or two and he was still good to go. Long ago, Jack had worked out how much it took to knock him down. It was too much for tonight. 

He wasn’t sure why he’d said he’d go. Three’s a crowd - Jamie and David and him. They didn’t need it. But her eyes were sharp and certain and Jamie Ross didn’t care if three was a crowd cause these days Jack carried a ghost with him wherever he went. 

It was just this case. Just this one. It was over now, plead out. 

Over. 

He stayed at the office and didn’t go to Primavera, like he’d promised. He knew she’d be angry, but he did it anyway. 

She called him at eleven, long after dessert would’ve been served. She sounded like she was somewhere busy, maybe a payphone. 

She’d already called his apartment twice. The last shot had been the office. People weren’t supposed to be at the office at eleven pm, especially after wrapping a case like Dressler. 

‘You said, Jack.’ She wasn’t angry. He thought that made it worse. He was holding the third scotch in his hands, but he hadn’t drunk it. He swirled it around until he felt sick. He could hear Jamie Ross breathing on the other end of the line. 

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. 

It wasn’t just about the dinner. 

‘Go home. Sleep.’ 

He hesitated. She heard it, though she didn’t say. They sat on a line, right then, between friends and not. Between people who said the things that they meant instead of talking round. Instead of saying, ‘Twelve months in Mount McGregor’, they’d say ‘She’s dead, Jack. Claire Kincaid is dead’. 

‘I’ve just got some paperwork-’

‘Cut the bullshit.’ 

She was on it. Still not angry. There was a sigh at the end of her voice. He didn’t say anything. There was nothing left in him but bullshit lies he’d been telling himself for months. He drank the third scotch and the moment it burned the back of his throat he regretted it. 

‘I’ll be there in ten,’ she said. He had no fight to push her away. He put his hand to his forehead and the palm was cold against his skin. 

‘Ok,’ he said. ‘Ok.’ 

She made it in seven and a half. 

…

Jack sat at the desk. He’d taken his jacket and tie off and pushed his sleeves up. His eyes were glassy and dark, his hair ruffled and messed. He knew he looked a state. He looked the way he did after, when Adam would sit on the corner of his desk with his hands folded in his lap and say, ‘Jack, take a day. One fucking day. Take it,’ and it wasn’t a choice, not then. 

Jamie pulled a chair close to the side of the desk. She smelled like roses, like something sweet. It stuck to his throat. He thought he might choke on it. 

‘I’m sorry you had to leave David,’ he said. He spoke first and fast, to hide the shake in his voice. So that he didn’t lose his nerve and Jack wasn’t the kind of guy who lost his nerve a lot. He blamed the alcohol, but he knew it was deeper. It had been nearly twelve months since he’d said her name out loud. People had stopped asking. He knew Jamie was going to ask. 

‘David understood. It’s an emergency.’ 

‘An understandable guy, that’s good right?’ 

Jamie laughed. She laughed loud and deep and every single note of it was wrong. 

No. Not wrong. Different. He hated that even more than it being wrong. 

‘You shouldn’t have come,’ he said. 

She shot him down with one raised eyebrow. She reached across the table and took the scotch bottle and put it by her feet. 

‘What was she like?’ Jamie asked. Her voice was quiet, soft. He wondered if this was the way she spoke to her daughter. It wasn’t the way she spoke in court. 

He pulled his ring off his finger and then put it back, just for something to do. He was thinking about the question and his mouth wouldn’t open without choking. He swallowed. ‘Did you read the file?’ he said, instead. ‘I bet you read the file.’ 

‘Jack.’

They looked at each other across the table. He picked up his tie and pulled the material between his fingers and there was a comfort in that. 

In the end, he said, ‘Twelve months in Mount McGregor, Jamie, it’s got nothing on this.’ He held the tie taught, between his two hands, wrapped around the palms of his hands and he thought they must be turning white round about now. But he held them there just to feel it. 

‘Claire,’ he said, and it rolled on his tongue the way it used it. He hated that. It should’ve been alien, out of place. It should’ve at least felt different. He said, ‘Claire Kincaid was my fault,’ and he watched Jamie shake her head. 

‘You know that’s not true.’ 

‘No - I don’t.’ 

Jamie covered his fists with her hands. He looked up at her. ‘I read the file Jack,’ she said and there was something infinitely tender in the softness of her skin against his. ‘I read the file.’

They sat for a while without saying anything. 

Neither was one for comfort, ordinarily. But there was nothing ordinary about the Dressler case. 

She didn’t ask him to spill his guts. He didn’t ask her to leave. 

They sat and it got late. Eleven vanished, twelve rolled around to replace it. He felt guilty because she’d left David for this. He wanted to tell her to go but he didn’t trust his voice. 

They were waiting. 

….

It had been in this office that he had kissed Claire for the first time. It had been like playing a game. Pushing the envelope further and further. 

At first, it was nothing much. Just a comment, here or there. ‘You should go home, Claire,’ he’d say, and she’d look up and him and tuck her hair behind her ear. 

‘Just get me a drink, Jack.’ 

He’d laugh. 

Or she would look at him when it was late and say, ‘Can you help with this?’ and she was talking about her necklace. So he’d be behind her and his hands would be at her neck. He would rest his palms on the bare skin by her shoulders, and her breathing would hitch, hesitate. And then he’d unclasp her necklace slowly. 

Moments like that would last forever. Until she broke away, or he did. And they knew then it was dangerous ground. On account of his history, and hers. It was a well-worn path. But it was a game. Nothing more. 

Like they were waiting to see which would break first. 

Sometimes they’d stand too close and they knew it. In a crowded elevator, maybe when Adam was there. She would put her hand on his arm and hold it there. It would feel like burning. He’d put his hand on the small of her back and feel her shiver. And then the doors would open and they didn’t talk about it. 

A game. Push and push. 

Then, one night, they were in his office. Pitch dark outside, door shut. Three months. Ninety days. There was paperwork abandoned on his desk. 

They were standing by the window. His tie was loose. She had one button undone on her blouse. It was after midnight. They should’ve gone a long time ago. Too busy for scotch, drowned in motions and writs. 

He was standing just behind her. She was looking at the city, through the half-closed blinds. He listened to her breathe, slowly, and his face was close to her shoulder. He wanted her to turn around, but she wouldn’t.

With slow, deliberate movements, he kissed her neck and thought that was a victory. She closed her eyes. He waited there, with his head bent into her, his breath against her ear. He wondered what had made him brave. Adam had made it clear, Claire was a line he shouldn’t cross. He didn’t want to be that guy. He had made promised and broken them all, day by day.

What was it about that night, when they stood at the window stone cold sober? But they had been standing at the edge for longer than he realised and the cliff was crumbling. He put his hands on her waist and kissed her again. 

She whispered, ‘Jack, you’re an asshole,’ and then she turned around, sharply, and took the collar of his shirt in her hands. 

Claire Kincaid kissed him as the late night lights of New York died around them. She kissed him hard and fast and when she pulled away, she said, ‘Let’s get out of here,’ and she held his hand in hers and laughed. 

She laughed and he’s never forgotten the way it rang, made him go lightheaded. Falling, even then. Falling and falling. 

The game was over. She won. There was never another outcome. 

‘Yes,’ he said, and he pressed a kiss to the side of her lips. ‘Let’s go, now.’ 

Claire led him out of the office. She kissed him in the hallway, with nothing but darkness around them. She kissed him in the elevator and he had his fingers on her collarbone. It was like they’d broken the dam, cracked it right down the middle. He needed her. He thought, fuck the world, screw the reputation and Adam and everyone who came before. 

All he could see was Claire. 

That’s when they should’ve run. The night the game ended, when they laid down in her bed in her tiny apartment and bared themselves in turn. As he pressed butterfly kisses to her abdomen, he should’ve said, ‘Never go back, let’s never go back.’ 

They should’ve turned in the lights and refused to look over their shoulders. 

It was supposed to be a game. 

He guessed, in the end, he lost more than he gained. In the end. 

Jack Mccoy lost his heart. 

And maybe that should’ve been a victory, if it wasn’t six feet down now. 

….

Jamie Ross told him a story. He had his hands behind his head, leaning back, he’d kicked off his shoes long ago. 

She was still on the other side of the desk, sitting up straight, watching him. They knew a lot about each other without asking - things they had asked other people, like Adam or Lennie or a court judge’s clerk. They didn’t talk about this stuff, they walked right over the cracks in the ground like they weren’t there. 

He never asked her how she knew, or who she spoke to about Claire. It didn’t matter. Just like she never asked who he talked to about her daughter, or her ex, or her work ethic. Never came up. 

Lines and more lines. These ones were fortified. 

But still, she was here. 

She still told a story.

‘Have you ever been to Lake George?’ she said. ‘It’s upstate. Three and a half hours on a good day.’ 

She was looking at him straight up. He wanted to look away but he couldn’t. There was something like a last chance in the way she looked at him. 

‘I grew up in Huntingdon, you know. Long Island. But every summer my parents would pack up and we would go upstate. We took two cars. My dad and my brothers would go in one, the four of them and my father and they would listen to the football on the radio. Mom and I would be in the other one and I would always get the front seat. I was used to fighting my brothers for it. 

And there would be this house waiting. Right on the shore of the lake. I used to stare at it and think it went on forever. I would sit at the water’s edge with my feet in the water, even when it was raining. I loved it there, I never wanted to come back at the end of vacation. Sitting by the water there, it felt like things didn’t matter, like I could just be with the water. 

After I married Neil, we went skiing in France or to country houses in Vermont. We didn’t go to Lake George. He called it boring. I’m going to take Katie there. Soon. I promised myself the moment the divorce came through. People need that kind of quiet, every once in a while.’ 

She was holding on to her chair with both hands. She was still watching him. ‘What I’m asking, Jack, do you have a place like Lake George? Have you got somewhere you can go and find peace?’ 

He was smiling, despite himself. He still had his tie in his hands, but he’d relaxed his grip. He could feel the scotch in his blood, the ones he’d drunk before Jamie showed up. In truth, they’d been his peace, the only quiet he got was when he passed out. Not even sleep. Sleep brought dreams and they weren’t good for anyone. 

‘There’s no place,’ he said, shrugging. When he’d been a kid, there’d been no piling into cars and driving upstate. There’d been no vacations, no radio up loud. There’d never been no peace in Jack Mccoy’s life. 

Maybe, when it was early morning light - maybe twenty minutes before the alarm hit - and Claire was sleeping in his arms. When he could feel her rising and falling against his chest. When her hands blindly, sleepily, reached for his. Maybe that was peace, or the only kind of peace he’d ever known. That moment, when you’re asleep and you're awake and it was like a dream, just like a dream except it was real. 

But he was never getting that back. Not now. 

‘You’re the kind of man, Jack Mccoy,’ Jamie said, leaning forward, until her hands were held together right in front of him, ‘the kind of man who’ll work until they’re eighty, then look back and think, where did all that go? Where did everyone go?’ 

He shrugged. She was staring at him, mouth set into a half smile. A frustrated smile. ‘What’s wrong with working all your life?’ he said. 

She laughed and shook her head. 

‘There has got to be more, Jack.’ 

He dropped his gaze. Jamie Ross still leant towards him and he wondered if this meant they were friends. 

He said, ‘She would’ve told me to stop sulking,’ and shook his head slowly. ‘She would’ve said, Jack, pull yourself together.’ 

‘Claire?’ 

‘Yeah. Claire.’ 

‘Are you going to do it? Are you going to ‘pull yourself together’?’ 

‘Sometime.’ 

He gathered up his tie, folded it small enough to fit in his fist. ‘Every person I save with this job, all those victims I help. Do you know what I think, every single time since it happened? I think, why couldn’t I save her? All those people, and I lost her.’ 

Jamie pushed herself forward and took the tie out of his grip. She put her hand on his shoulder. 

‘Jack, it’s shit, ok. I am not going to dress it up and say that it’s not shit. But you are not god, you were not driving that car, you didn’t cut the breaks or leave her bleeding out. Come on Jack, the world is not yours to save. Cut the self-pity and the scotch. Life is shit. My ex husband thinks I’m a bad mom. You have to roll with the punches sometimes.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, of course. It hurts until it doesn’t. You’ve got to get up off the floor and keep going.’ 

He smirked. ‘Anyone ever tell you you're so persuasive you should be a lawyer?’ 

She laughed. He laughed with her. 

‘Now, I think David won’t be impressed if I stay all night here.’ 

‘Yes, yeah.’

She gathered her bag from her feet. He sat up straighter. 

‘Thank you Jamie,’ he said.

She stood up, at the edge of the desk. She tapped her fingers on the wood. 

‘By the way, never pull a stunt like this one again.’ 

‘Scout’s honour.’

‘Don’t be offended Jack, but I’m not sure I’d trust that too much.’ 

He smiled, right to his eyes, in a way he hadn’t smiled in a long time. 

‘See you in the morning,’ he said, thudding his hand down on the table as if to mark the end of something.

She nodded and headed for the door. Right as she was about to step out, she turned and looked back at him.

‘I still expect you for dinner one of these days.’

And he laughed. He laughed until he couldn’t breath.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are greatly appreciated. Love to know what anyone thought about it.


End file.
